Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/343

Rh P L A 11 REGIONS 327 the work of Lieutenant Greely s party will consist in the synchronous observations taken during 1882. As no succour arrived in the summer of 1883 though relieving vessels were despatched both in 1882 and in 1883 Lieutenant Greely started from Lady Franklin Bay with his men on the 9th August, expecting to find a vessel in Smith Sound. On the 21st October they were obliged to encamp at Cape Sabine, on the western shore of Smith Sound, and build a hut for wintering. A few depots were found, which had been left by Sir George Nares and Lieutenant Beebe, but all was exhausted before the spring. Then came a time of indescribable misery and acute suffering. The poor fellows began to die of actual starvation ; and, when the relieving steamers &quot; Thetis &quot; and &quot; Bear &quot; reached Cape Sabine, Lieutenant Greely and six suffering companions were found just alive. If the simple and necessary precaution had been taken of stationing a depot ship in a good harbour at the entrance of Smith Sound, in annual communication with Greely on one side and with America on the other, there would have been no disaster. If precautions proved to be necessary by experience are taken, there is no undue risk or danger in polar enterprise. There is now no question as to the value and importance of polar discovery, and as to the principles on which expeditions should be sent out. Their objects are explora tion for scientific purposes and the encouragement of maritime enterprise. The main principles have been briefly and clearly stated by Lieutenant Weyprecht : (1) arctic research is of the highest importance for a know ledge of nature s laws ; (2) geographical research is valu able in proportion as it opens the field to scientific research generally ; (3) the north pole has, for science, no greater significance than any other point in the higher latitudes. Lieutenant Weyprecht thus contends, as the council of the Royal Geographical Society has contended for years, that the attainment of the highest possible latitude or of the pole itself is not the object to be sought, but the explora tion of the unknown area with a view to scientific results. In planning a new polar expedition on an adequate scale it will be necessary to profit by the lessons of experi ence. This experience may be summed up in a few words. Any advanced ship or party must have a depot ship to fall back upon which is within reach, and also in com munication with the outer world. This makes disaster on a large scale, humanly speaking, impossible. Every precaution that medical science can suggest must be taken against scurvy. An advancing expedition must always follow a coast line, because an entry into the drift ing pack entails failure and probably loss of the ship. The coast-line should trend north with a westerly aspect, because a general motion of the sea towards the west causes the ice to set in that direction, unless deflected from purely local causes. Hence there are usually open lanes of water along the west sides of polar lands at some time of the navigable season, while the eastern sides are usually closed with ice. These well-established canons point to the western side of Franz-Josef Land as the next region to be explored. Physical Geography of the North Polar Region. Our ignorance of about 3,000,000 square miles within the north polar circle, out of a total area of of 8,201,883, debars us from the possibility of considering the physical geography of the polar region as a whole. We can merely take stock of the isolated facts which our limited knowledge enables us to register. As the physical condition of the whole area is mainly affected by pature. the movements and positions of the ice masses, the temperature, and the circumstances which affect it, become the first and most fundamental elements for consideration. An examination of Dove s isothermal charts shows that the isotherms about the pole form ellipses tending to arrange themselves between two poles of cold, one in North America and the other in eastern Siberia. The mildest winters appear to be in the meridians of Behring Strait and the Spitzbergen seas. These temperatures appear to be mainly Expedition. LocUity. Latitude and Longitude. Three Summer Months. Three Winter Months Year. M-Clure Banks Island 74 N 118 W +35 -4-1 S Parry Melville Island 74 2-5 X. Ill W. +37 -10-6 + 1-4 Sutherland.. Cormvallis Island 7445X. 94 W. + 36 - 8-6 + 2-5 Belcher Northumberland Sound 77 OX. 97 W. + 30-8 11-8 -1-1 Parry Port Bowen 7325X. 89 W. +36-9 - C-7 +4-3 influenced by the extent of frozen land or fixed ice on the one hand and the neighbourhood of open water and moving ice on the other. The following table shows the mean temperatures for the summer months, winter months, and whole year, at various stations in the archipelago north of the American continent : At the Great Slave Lake in North America, Sir John liiehardson found the mean of the three summer months to be +49, of the three winter months -0 8, and of the year +9. On the west coast of Greenland the climate of the southernmost part resembles that of Iceland or the northern shores of Norway. It exhibits a gradually decreasing temperature throughout the whole of its extent to the north. The annual mean temperature at the south ernmost station of Julianshaab is +33, and at the northernmost of Upernivik +13. The mean temperature of the three summer months for Julianshaab is + 48 and for Upernivik +48; for the three winter months respectively + 20 and - 7. The lowest temperature ever known at the Danish Greenland stations occurred at Upernivik and was - 47. Farther north on the west coast the &quot;North Star,&quot; in 1851-52, observed the temperature for the year in Wolstenholme Sound (lat. 76 30 N.). For the three snnimer months the mean was +37 8, for the winter months -6 8, and for the year + 4 5. The most northern observations ever taken for a complete year were those of H.M.S. &quot;Alert,&quot; at Floeberg Beach in 82 27 N. Synchronous observations were taken by H.M.S. &quot;Discovery,&quot; in Lady Franklin Bay, lat. 81 44 N. The results were as follows : Ship. La itude. Summer. Winter. Year. &quot;Alert&quot; 82 27 N. + 34 -36 -3 &quot; Discovery &quot; 81 44 N. + 33 -37 -4 The minimum temperatures were - 73, registered at Floeberg Beach in March, and - 70, at Lady Franklin Bay in the same month. These temperatures can be compared with the observations taken at JVIossel Bay, on the north coast of Spitzbergen, by Nor- denskib ld (lat. 79 54 N.), and on the south coast of Franz- Josef Land by Weyprecht and Leigh Smith. At these stations the winters are less severe on account of the closer proximity of open water. In Franz- Josef Land the minimum in the winter months was -43, and the mean was -26; in May the mean was +22. The climate on the coast of Siberia was registered at the winter quarters of the &quot; Vega&quot; in 67 7 N., the mean temperature of the three winter months being 10, minimum - 51, and the mean of the three summer months +36; but the Siberian cold is far more intense inland. The direction of the winds affects the temperatures and the Winds, movements of ice, but no general remarks upon them can be usefully made until our knowledge of the polar area is more complete. One of the most interesting features in polar winds is the instability of the temperature caused by them over certain areas during the winter months. At Jacobshavn, in Greenland, the mean temperature in February was +16 in one year (1872), and - 25 in another (1863), a difference of 41. It was remarked that great rises in the winter temperatures occurred at a time when the wind was blowing from the interior glacier. This wind often turns into a sudden gale. Greenland is surrounded by regions which have extremely different winter temperatures. While on one side there is the intense cold of Arctic America and the Parry Islands, on the other, to the east-south-east, there is the warm temperature caused by the Gulf Stream ; so that the Greenland climate is at all times dependent on the direction of the winds. All winds from south through west to north-west bring cold weather, but the east and south-east winds raise the temperature. The hot south-east winds of Greenland are caused in the same way as the &quot; fbhn &quot; of the Alps. The interior glacier of Greenland rises to a height of at least 7000 feet. A warm wind from the Atlantic saturated with moisture could afford to lose considerably by cooling on its journey of 400 miles over the lofty ice deserts of Greenland, and yet arrive on the west coast with a comparatively high temperature. The influence of the Greenland fbhns extends over a wide area. In 1875 there was a great rise of temperature at the Danish stations of Greenland; and Sir George Nares observed the same phenomenon, at nearly the same time, at his winter quarters in 82 17 N. In Franz-Josef Land there are also great rises of temperature during the winter, with southerly winds accompanied